The traditional American media control strategy is containment. In this model, discussion is directed around a tiny subset of the issues. The presumed issue h

The traditional American media control strategy is containment. In this model, discussion is directed around a tiny subset of the issues. The presumed issue here being "Won't Bezos quash articles critical of him?" but that's only for containment purposes. While that merits an amount of debate, the bigger story here is much more interesting. It concerns the potential for intense collaboration between the government and industry, as seen in countries such as Italy during the Berlusconi years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Berlusconi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Berlusconi). From the article: "...he bought the newspaper because he wanted to make it into a more powerful national — and even global — publication, and that The Post was well situated to be a watchdog over the leaders of the world’s most powerful country." This is a strategic move that doesn't have anything to do with classic American values of freedom of speech and access to information. It's about increasing his power, not about journalistic values such as improving the quality of the newspaper, researching stories better, etc. Bezos isn't a career journalist or editor at all. He has no qualifications or experience to perform these functions. His only qualification is wads of money and business leadership. But just like presidency, these don't prepare one for civic leadership. They don't replace historical, world or legal knowledge. I don't trust how he feels he can suddenly serve as "watchdog" over leaders when he really only has (massively!) large-scale retail experience. It's more likely a Caesar-style move to grab the role of Pontifex to broker power. When he talks about "watchdog over leaders," I feel he means leaders will have to curry favor with him to get topics presented in the proper way, as opposed to using the paper as an instrument for fighting Congress for better working conditions, higher minimum wage, working visa reform, immigration reform, etc. So, this NYT article follows tightly the trend of containment outlined by Chomsky and Zinn, in which discussion is focused by presentation of minor, distracting points in order to draw energy away from the more salient points. The minor point being the newspaper's ability to criticize its own editor. The larger point being a business leader steering the publication of information toward large-scale corporate ends and away from classic American values.